jews d
in
the
BRYAN GOTTLIEB
Frankel Jewish
Academy students
wait to return to
class after a bomb
threat at the JCC,
where their school
is housed.
Bomb Threats
Despite some withdrawals, most remain at JCCs
and schools here and nationwide.
BEN SALES JTA / KERI GUTEN COHEN JN STORY DEVELOPMENT EDITOR
W
hen Cincinnati’s Mayerson Jewish
Community Center was hit with
a bomb threat on Jan. 18, Adam
Bellows was satisfied with how the staff handled
the preschool kids, including his 2-year-old son.
The kids, said Bellows, had no idea the threat
had happened. They were evacuated and taken
to a secure location where they watched car-
toons.
But after he got home, Bellow’s son started
having a tough time. He couldn’t sleep and was
scared to return to preschool the next day.
“It was hard to see how much it disturbed
him,” Bellows said. “He wasn’t scared at the time
or anything, but the next day he was saying,
‘I don’t want to go to the JCC.’ He kept asking,
‘Are we going to watch Mickey Mouse again? Is
Mommy going to come pick me up again?’ His
world was interrupted.”
More than 100 bomb threats have targeted
JCCs, day schools and other Jewish institutions,
including Hillel Day School in Farmington Hills,
the JCC in West Bloomfield and the Ann Arbor
Hebrew Day School. The threats have come in
seven waves since the beginning of the year.
On March 7, more than a dozen locations
were targeted, including JCCs, schools and
offices of the Anti-Defamation League. And on
Sunday, during Purim celebrations, another
seven JCCs were threatened, some for the sec-
ond time in a week.
While many JCCs report that members and
preschoolers are staying put, there have been
some exceptions. The Roth Family JCC near
Orlando has seen 50 children pull out, according
to reports JTA has confirmed with a source who
has knowledge of the matter. In Birmingham,
Ala., where the JCC has been targeted four sepa-
rate times, six families have withdrawn their
children.
“We have had a couple of withdrawals from
our early childhood center,” said Brian Siegel,
CEO of the Metro Detroit JCC, which had a
threat Jan. 18. “We have had many more people
who have said this is the best time to support
the JCC and that they won’t be deterred by this
form of terrorism.”
That attitude is echoed by parents who spoke
to JTA. As in Detroit, they were happy with how
the centers have handled the threats. The kids
returned promptly to their
programs, and business went
on as usual — without any
children expressing any fear.
“No one brought it up,
including parents of prospec-
tive students,” said Steve
Freedman, head of school at
Hillel Day School here, which
Steve Freedman
was threatened Feb. 1. “They
were appreciative of how we
handled things. Life goes on.
It’s important to keep things in perspective.”
And yet, despite appeals from JCCs for calm
and defiance, the repeated bomb threats have
taken their toll. The Orlando JCC is holding an
online fundraiser called “#ThenNowAndAlways,”
whose donor pitch says that, in light of “chal-
lenges greater than we expected,” this year “it
continued on page 20
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March 16 • 2017
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